


Opportunity

by Space_Rock_Enby



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Melancholy, Pearl has depression, Post-Gem War, Set sometime before Episode: s03e21 Gem Hunt, Strawberries, Veterans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26275036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Space_Rock_Enby/pseuds/Space_Rock_Enby
Summary: Pearl feels lost. Jasper looks to take advantage.
Relationships: Jasper & Pearl (Steven Universe)
Kudos: 4





	Opportunity

_I don't know whether to laugh or cry_

_and I don't know whether to live or die_

_I kept my love for her locked deep inside_

_it cuts like a knife_

_she's out of my life_

_out of my life, out of my hair_

_out of my mind, there's no love in there_

_I move on, move on_

  * _Saul William - Fearless_



There’s a little snap in the back of her mind when the warp completes. Even after all these thousands of years and probably tens of thousands of warps, she’s never asked anyone else if they feel that too. It’s never come up in conversation, not even from Steven when he started traveling through the warp with them. She wonders if it’s just her. Maybe Pearls weren’t designed to warp, just to trot along behind their superiors.

The scent of warm wet earth and strawberries greeted her as the air displaced by the warp drifted back in. It must have just rained prior to her arrival. The humidity was thick, not that she needed to worry about the weather or temperatures (to a point), such a thing didn’t really affect gems one way or another, but she had learned that paying attention to these things on the battlefield could yield information and advantages that her opponent wasn’t aware of.

She hadn’t seen a proper war in centuries.

She had also never stopped fighting.

Amongst the mounds of massive strawberries, an uncountable number of weapons still lay scattered about. The Crystal Gems still occasionally made journeys out here to clean up but the thought of everything that had happened at this last location of the Gem War was emotionally taxing and the best they could do was gather up a few things and head back to the temple and not talk about how they were feeling until it was time to go back and do it all over again a few months later.

What was it about the final attack from the diamonds, that not only shattered and mutated gems but also made the strawberries here go so large and plentiful? It was just another sign of the Virulent and potent life of this world. Something devastating to her own kind was transformed into something wondrous and strange by the Earth.

Not unlike the birth of Steven and its impact on her own life.

At other times visiting battlefields would flood her with emotions. The thrill of last moment victories, the crushing weight of losing friends, seeing Rose inspire everyone to push themselves to be free.

To be free.

Pearl was free now. She was free and it felt like nothing. She might as well be drifting in space.

Her role as a servant was done. Her role as confidant and soldier was completed. Her role as lover… did she even ever really have that role? Either way, the chapter was definitively closed. She wound her way through the path leading to floating islands leading up to the spot where it happened, where she and Rose committed themselves to their rebellion. Pearl projected that moment from her gem, it was seared into her core self and an integral part of her gemetic material. It never failed to evoke an emotion from her. It never failed to bring her to tears.

Except for this time. The flickering image of Rose asking (not commanding) her if she wanted to be part of a desperate and doomed struggle ran through its paces, but Pearl felt nothing. It wasn’t much more to her than watching one of Steven’s television programs. It was all distant and disconnected. 

She sat there for a long time and felt blank. For the first time, Pearl left the little floating island without a single tear in her eye. She listlessly hoped from one fragment of floating stone to the next on her way down. She didn’t notice the large figure and its bright orange skin until it was almost too late to avoid.

Pearl dropped short, coming down with a squelch on the wet ground. She sat, tensed, ready to fight. The massive figure didn’t move, she stood relaxed, long white hair drifting in the damp breeze of the place. 

“Where did it happen?” Jasper asked, her raspy voice distant and almost sad if Pearl believed Jasper was capable of being sad.

“What? Where did what happen?” Pearl’s eyes remained locked on the quartz, but her opposite never bothered even looking at her. Pearl was all too aware of what Jasper thought of her; not worth the time.

“You know what I’m talking about. Where were you and your band of cowards hiding when the Diamonds crushed the rebellion? It couldn’t have been far from here there wasn’t time to get away for many of...” she trailed off, Homeworld suffered losses in that attack too. There was no denying that.

Pearl stood slowly. Once upon a time, such a statement would have lit a fire in her chest. She reached for something, anything inside, any emotions, but there was nothing to grasp. Her arms and legs felt heavy and useless.

She didn’t risk a look behind her, merely inclined her head towards the general direction, “Back over there by that clearing, Rose saved us. Just a couple of us.”

Jasper chuckled, “The Great Rose Quartz does it again.”

Pearl knew there was real danger here and if she was smart she’d be heading to warp pad, but a small part of her wanted to just let whatever was going to happen happen. She wanted to pretend it was curiosity instead of fatalism, but she couldn’t even summon the mental strength to even do that.

Jasper’s eyes finally connected with Pearl, “I’ve been watching you since you arrived.”

The heavy humidity of the air ticked up ever so slightly. Jasper’s eyes burned oh so bright.

“I watched you go through the motions, trying to find something here,” she grinned, “trying to find a reason to exist.” The grin faded, “I know what that is like.”

This caught Pearl by surprise, it must have shown on her face because Jasper gave her a knowing smile, “I’ve heard stories about you, ‘The Terrifying Renegade Pearl. I heard about the terrible things you did during the war. I didn’t think even half of them were true, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Get to the point, Jasper. I don’t want to be here and I don't want to be anywhere near you,” Pearl said, trying to keep the exhaustion from her voice. She didn’t want to be around anyone, but that was another concern.

“You wouldn’t make it to the warp pad before I shattered you,” she paused as if trying to tamp down her anger, “I’m - I’m not here to threaten you.

Pearl didn’t move.

Jasper sat on the wet ground, she played with some bit of metal probably found laying around the battlefield, “This world. It’s terrible. It warps everything it touches.”

Her focus stayed with the metal in her hand, “My diamond… I miss her. Did you know her? Did you ever speak to her before Rose shattered her?” rage crept through her words.

She doesn’t know. She couldn’t know. She doesn’t even know I was Pink Diamond’s Pearl, we must all seem like the exact same useless little trinkets to the likes of Jasper.

“I--I did,” Pearl offered tentatively, “I did speak to her a few times. She was, uh, nice.”

“Yet that didn’t stop you from associating with the person who shattered her, did it?” Jasper spit between clenched teeth, “You are as much a monster as I am.”

“It’s true,” Pearl spoke to herself as much as Jasper.

But not entirely for the reasons you think, she said to herself.

There was something distant and sad in Jasper’s eyes. Pearl felt a strange revulsion as she realized she had the same look in her eyes when she thought about Rose.

Jasper rolled the metal object in her hands again, what was it? 

“I don’t pretend to understand how a Pearl of all things got caught up in all this, but I recognize a warrior when I see one, especially one who’s entire purpose has been ripped away from them. That kind of damage doesn’t heal and we wear it around openly even if we don’t want it known... I served Pink Diamond and now I serve Yellow but it isn’t the same. I’m lost and I can’t take it anymore. How do you stand it?”

The look of despair on Jasper’s face took her aback, she found herself kneeling in wet grass. She never would have thought that this eternal menace was capable of tears, but here they were welling up in the corner of her golden eyes. Maybe this was it, maybe they could bring Jasper around like they did the other Homeworld gems. Maybe this Pearl’s opportunity to dabble in that strange magic of acceptance that Steven could wield.

“Some days I can’t,” she said simply, her thin frame felt heavy enough to fall through the earth.

A drop. Rain? A tear? She can’t tell.

A flicker of light. A crack of thunder in the distance.

“Fuse with me.”

Pearl was aghast, “What? Fuse? You must have cracked your gem if you think I’d do that with the likes of you. Is that what this has all been about?”

“We have a fire in us that’s been stamped out by this world. We could give each other purpose. I don’t even care what we do with this power, help your friends, or destroy everything that has ever wronged us. What matters is completeness. Direction. Drive.”

“Lapis dumped you and you’re so desperate to fuse you’d try it with a mere Pearl?” that hurt to say more than Pearl expected.

“I’ll admit you’re not my first choice. But you know it’s what we both want.”

As insulting and horrifying as this all was there was part of Pearl, the dark quiet part, the part that betrayed Garnet, nearly killed Steven on more than one occasion, that considered doing terrible things to Greg to get rid of him… that part began to speak to her, ‘You wouldn’t be so weak anymore. Garnet would finally consider you an equal, Amethyst would respect you, Steven…’

Jasper outstretched her arm, palm open facing her. _Just like Rose did._ This was all too much, How long had Jasper been thinking about this? How long had she been plotting? Following? Spying? Waiting until Pearl was at her lowest before approaching her…

Pearl felt the first few drops from the renewed storm begin to fall and spatter on her body. Jasper seemed to pay it no mind.

Inside her, the exhaustion began to boil away. There was something else beneath it. A feeling she couldn’t quite understand yet.

Pearl refused to move. Refused to bow. Why?

Jasper stood slowly, pulling her hand back. Her whole body tensed. The despair on her face pulled back into a rictus grin, “You know you should really be better about cleaning this place up, you never know what someone might find laying around.”

In her other hand was the metal sphere, a gem cut button on its surface. Before Pearl could react, Jasper's thumb clicked it. The sphere hummed and a pulse flashed, displacing the rain and wind. It prickled Pearl's skin and sent a sharp spike of pain into her gem, she grasped her head and screamed. Jasper’s hand flew to her gem, jaw clenched but with nothing more than a grunt.

“What-- what did you do?”

“Warp Lock,” she laughed through her own suffering, “Shuts off gem technology, no warp pads, no conjured weapons, no coming back when your body is destroyed. It’s simple, agree to fuse with me, I turn it off, and we see what we can have together. Try and fight me and I’ll crush you. Try and run and I’ll just turn this off and take that warp pad back to your temple. They won’t know what hit them.”

Steven. The others. No. This can’t be happening. 

Jasper popped the sphere up in the air and caught it, “This has been sitting here in the dirt for thousands of years and you fools didn’t even know it. You’re all so weak. You especially. You’re nothing but a Pearl who stepped above her station. You don’t deserve your freedom.”

Pearl’s face when blank. Head bowed she stepped towards Jasper. Subservient. Beaten. Worthless. Jasper reached out and pulled her close, pressing Pearl to her chest. Pearl inched up on her toes, mouth close to Jasper’s own. The look in Jasper’s eyes was a mixture of lust and surprise.

Where she had darkness she now had fire. Everything she’d been through. Every struggle with Homeworld, with her love, with herself.

The storm seemed to pause.

Pearl’s racing mind seemed to pause.

Clarity rushed in to fill the moment.

“Some days are hard, so hard. Some are better though, “ pity for the slumped giant before her began to dilute her own depression, “ but I get through it because…”

Jasper looked up at her a newfound intensity in her eyes.

Pearl raised her face to the growing storm feeling the first trickles of rain strike her skin like cool needles, she saw Steven hugging her even though she was catatonic with grief, Amethyst comforting her despite all the battles they waged against one another, Garnet offering a second chance and encouragement in the face of one of her worst transgressions.

“...because I don’t have to do it alone.”

The air pressure dropped suddenly.

“Jasper, you don’t have to do it alone either. It might not be easy, but honestly, if we can get through to Peridot we can get through to anyone, “Pearl laughed but she was the only one.

Jasper took a step back but didn’t seem to notice she did it.

“They are your friends, but _she_ was more than that to you and _she’s_ gone forever. It’s hollowed you out, like Pink Diamond’s death has done to me,” she rasped.

“You know, you’re right. I’m not going to deny that. The difference between you and me is that I’m trying to fill that void with love… love for myself, thunder cracked above Pearl, “I...I’m enough… or at least I’m going to be one day.”

Another step back, the anger on Jasper’s face was shifting to… to what? 

“I--I... I don't know what to do. Everything is so confusing,” she spoke barely a whisper, “How do I heal th-”

Pearl’s hair stood on end. Her skin tingled. Fear… or wait…

The air grew alive. There seemed to be a sharpness in Pearl’s mouth. Without a thought, she threw herself backward from her kneeling position, a perfect somersault. A deafening crack and the world went blue-white. Despite her perfect form, the blast threw her off balance and she landed in a heap, mud, and wet grass cascading through the air as she tumbled. 

She lay there, dazzled and deafened. Senseless to the sound of the warp pad activating.

◇◇◇

“P. Oh geez, you’re awake!”

Pearl felt squeezed and shook, the whole sensation was nauseating and painful, but she let it happen, the comfort of Amethyst’s voice was more than enough to make up for it. Another pair of hands, smaller and warmer pressed on her arm.

“Pearl, are you ok? The warp pad in the temple made this weird sound and we knew you were out somewhere and when we tried to use it nothing happened so we had to run and get Peridot and she said something was blocking it and then I got really worried and then it made this sound again and then we warped around, “ Steven finally took a breath, “ until we came here and found you on the ground.”

“J-Jasper? Is Jasper ok?”

Garnet spoke from somewhere above her, voice slightly raised which was pure panic in Garnet terms, “Jasper, she was here? Did she attack you?”

The world slowly began to drift into focus still too bright, “Yes, and uh, no. She was here, I think she was going to attack but she didn’t.”

“Why was that?”

She eyed the burnt and crushed metal sphere in the center of a patch of discolored earth.

How did she explain that she and Jasper found a moment of common ground? How did she explain that both of them were monsters walking amongst civilized beings? She was working towards taming the thing she was in danger of becoming, but Jasper still had so far to go. It seemed too private to just say out loud in front of everyone.

“I don’t know. I think I got lucky and the lightning strike spoiled whatever she had planned.”

She had been so close. So close to helping her. Healing her. Healing herself. 

The opportunity was gone now, scattered in a blast of sparks and rain.

Pearl rose to her feet with the help of her friends and headed home.

**Author's Note:**

> I always wondered why Pearl and Jasper didn't fight when they met in Gem Hunt.


End file.
